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Hewlett-Packard UK has pulled a TV ad in which children pelt a tram with snowballs, in response to accusations that it could be responsible for a copycat incident in Birmingham. Except the children were throwing rocks.

We understand HP's concern to avoid being tainted with the brush of hooliganism, but question why the company felt it necessary to ditch the ad (which incidentally continues to show in other less bellicose European countries).

The citizens of Birmingham are a resourceful lot - at one time it was known as the workshop of the world, so industrious were they. Times change, but it is still an dreadful calumny on the city to suggest that local thugs are incapable of throwing rocks at buses without inspiration from an American computer company. ®